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Traveling on his scooter through Tel Aviv, filmmaker Tal Haim Yoffe finds a discarded box of old photographs in a green dumpster. This docu-detective film, slowly unwinds a family history, beginning in Lodz, Poland, and traveling through the Siberian Gulag, a Samarkand sugar plant, a Ha’apala ship and the battlefields of the Sinai Peninsula. Like Daniel Mendelsohn's bestseller The Lost and David Ofek’s film No. 17 is Anonymous, this tightly-paced tour de force vividly evokes the now-extinguished lives of an anonymous—but typical—Israeli family.

“I think there are thousands of families with not exactly the same story but families with Holocaust survivors as grandparents and great-grandparents, with IDF soldiers who got killed. It’s a typical family, and a tragic family. Everything that could have happened to them, happened to them.”
-Director Tal Haim Yoffe

Press Quotes

“Like Daniel Mendelsohn's nonfiction bestseller The Lost, documentary The Green Dumpster Mystery, from multihyphenate Tal Haim Yoffe, vividly evokes the now-extinguished lives of an extended family seared by the Holocaust and modern Israeli tragedies. A tightly paced tour de force of detection, narrated in unpretentious voice over by the filmmaker, engrossing picture achieves a unique tone that's not oppressively heavy. Tech credits are pro, with musical score a standout. Touching yet unsentimental, it represents a quality find for fests and broadcasters and deserves long life on DVD.” – Alissa Simon, Variety

“One of the best Israeli films of recent times. In an ostensibly light tone, which balances the serious subjects in the film - history and memory, Holocaust and bereavement - the film tells the story of the director himself who, as he rode his scooter through South Tel Aviv, found a stash of old photographs in a dumpster.

In the wake of this find, he sets out on a quest to find the people in the photo. Gradually, as in a very good thriller, in which secrets are revealed with increasing dramatic and emotional force, the director sets the stage for an Israeli family saga.

Yoffe succeeds in digressing from a personal story into a drama with symbolic power. This is a serious, complex and important work.” – Uri Klein, Haartetz

Credits

A One Man Films Production
With assistance from The New Israeli Foundation for Film and Television
Produced, Directed & Written by Tal Haim Yoffe
Camera Ari Amit
Editor Anat Lachovitz
Music By Dani Reichental
Featuring Tal Haim Yoffe, Dani Walkowicz, Mati Ben-Ari, Sivan Ben-Ari, Neta Gold, Bracha Klichewski and Friedrich Mücke

External Links

Review,
Jewish Journal Review,
J.B. Spins
Review,
Epoch TImes

Home Use DVD:
$29.95

Does not include Classroom or Library Use Rights or Public Performance Rights.More Information